Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I’m doing some work for my friends at Saltmine, an interactive agency in Seattle and Portland; for the Intel® Software Network group. We were challenged in late October to create a campaign that would attract software developers to engage with Intel’s Software experts to learn more about multithreading. 

(Lest anyone think Intel having a software group is an oxymoron, consider this: with Intel’s new multi-core chips in production, the importance of being able to program software to take advantage of these chips is increasing.)

Now I’m no technology whiz, that’s for sure.  And some of this deeper tech stuff really makes my head swim. 

But I know the creative process.  And I’m discovering some fascinating parallels between the new creative world and the new software development world. 

Just as developers need to learn new languages and systems; marketers and agencies are facing a new world of creating collaborative marketing experiences - kind of a multithreading series of messages and interactions - as we communicate with our prospects.

It’s wonderful to me that technology is what is uniting these two very different, but very similar creative processes.  The ends, in this case, are making the means.

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I’m doing some blog research for a client, searching Digg and Technorati for the most authoritive bloggers on some fun subjects - mostly in the technology arena.  And I’m here to tell you from my admittedly haughty high chair and clean blog interface perspective:

There are some really ugly blogs out there. 

Take the Silicon Valley Watcher for example. It has thousands of inbound links from hundreds of other bloggers, and it’s hard for me to tell the ads from the posts from the comments from the other stuff. 

I swear this is a blog made for an RSS reader.  The human eye is affronted when reading it.  At least, mine are.

Content, after all, is king.  But can’t we put a little design into how we display our thoughts?   At least, for those of us trying to form a first impression?

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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, or WOMMA, has just published blog guidelines in the wake of the Edelman/Wal-Mart “flogging” (fake blogging) fiasco a couple of weeks ago. Check them out here.

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There’s a great article for anyone who’s interested in setting up their own web presence in the NY Times yesterday about a new service from Microsoft called Office Live.

In a nutshell, it’ll help you get a domain name, set up and populate web pages with pre-designed templates, have email accounts that feed right into your Microsoft Outlook on your PC, easily and quickly. It’s designed for small businesses and individuals who don’t have the luxury of smart friends or an IT department.

In the more succinct words of David Pogue:

“….So how do you get an actual domain name like CaseyCorp.com? You have to pay a registrar company around $10 a year for it. You might then pay another company a few bucks a month to “hostâ€? your Web site, and somebody else to design the Web pages themselves. For nontechnical people, it’s all an expensive headache. No wonder half of all small businesses don’t even have Web sites.

But starting Nov. 15, somebody will offer to pick up the entire bill. You’ll be able to pick any dot-com (or .net, or .org) Web address that hasn’t already been taken — no charge. You’ll get to design a Web site, complete with links, graphics, search boxes, tables, forms and navigation bars, and hang it on the Web for all to see — no charge. You’ll even get crystal-clear traffic reports whenever you want them, showing how many people are beating a path to your door — and still no charge.

So who’s your mysterious benefactor? A little outfit called Microsoft.”

Sound too good to be true? Well since I’ve started my own business, I now have five email accounts, four calendars (plus paper); and have had to ask for the help of my friends at Moto Interactive to get a web presence for my main business. But I own a few more domains, so you can bet I’ll be giving this a try!

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I’m the luckiest girl in the world. I have a wonderful life and love, a fabulous group of family and friends, and an excellent career consulting for some amazing companies. (Lots of bubbly adjectives for me, I know, especially before 9:00 a.m.)

And anyone who knows me knows how much fun I have as a blogger. (Not that I have a personality change by putting on some magic hat when I sit down to write a post.)

I’ve met so many great people since I started blogging.

Anyway, I’m fabulously happy this morning for my friend Michael O’Connor-Clarke. I was fortunate to meet him when we worked together at Marqui. He’s a brilliant, funny, man, and he’s starting work today at (and I LOVE this) Thornley Fallis, heading up their Social Media practice. By sheer coincidence, I met CEO Joseph Thornley last week at the Blog Business Summit and was glad to have lunch with him.

Check out their blogs. Guaranteed you’ll learn great PR practices from them.

And Michael? Well, he’ll just make you happy you know him, too. Guaranteed.

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